Staying Ahead of Change (HBR OnPoint Collection)

Times are lean, so you're making your company leaner--slashing costs, "making your assets sweat." This may be essential for your firm's survival. But you're only catching up to competitors. You're following--not leading--change. And you're not developing a view of your business's future. A better approach? Define your customers, competitors, and capabilities today. Ask, "What will they be tomorrow?" If you can't imagine anything beyond what you see today, your firm may stumble when change strikes. Also hone your strategic resilience--the ability to reinvent business models and strategies long before the need becomes obvious. Continuously remake your firm's future instead of defend its past. Effect revolutionary change in lightning-quick, evolutionary steps without massive layoffs and other corporate turmoil. And constantly enhance your company's core competencies: collective knowledge about how to coordinate production skills and technologies to invent new markets and exploit emerging ones. The three Harvard Business Review articles in this collection: "The Quest for Resilience" by Gary Hamel and Liisa Valikangas (HBR reprint R0309C), "Competing for the Future" by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad (HBR reprint 94403), and "The Core Competence of the Corporation" by C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel (HBR reprint 90311).